Cisco, Check Point Lead Security Appliance Market: IDC

Overall factory revenue and units rose in the third quarter compared to Q3 2012, with worldwide revenue up 6.5 percent year over year to $2.2 billion.

Cisco continues to lead the overall security appliance market with a 15.9 percent share in factory revenue for the third quarter, on year-over-year growth of 5.9 percent, according to a report from IT research firm IDC.
Overall factory revenue and units rose in the third quarter of 2013 (3Q13) compared to the third quarter of 2012, with worldwide revenue up 6.5 percent year over year to $2.2 billion, as shipments increased 0.3 percent year over year to 490,323 units.
The firewall market declined 15.1 percent year over year, but still represented 21 percent of security appliance revenue in the quarter. Meanwhile, the content security segment rose by 1.6 percent compared to Q3 2012 and accounted for 17.6 percent of the market.
The Unified Threat Management (UTM) segment saw the largest year-over-year revenue increase at 29.2 percent and accounted for 39.4 percent of security appliance revenue in 3Q13 as multi-function appliances continue to drive growth in the overall market.

Check Point held the number two spot with a 12.4 percent share for the quarter as revenue increased 4.6 percent compared to the third quarter of 2012. Fortinet remained the third largest security appliance vendor, with a 6.4 percent share in the quarter.

"While growth slowed somewhat in the first two quarters of 2013, the third quarter saw a nice rebound and puts the market on pace to finish the year in strong fashion," John Grady, research manager of security products at IDC, said in a statement. "While concerns about government spending and macro conditions at the regional level continue to be an issue, it's obvious that security spending, while not immune to overall budget pressures, remains a key priority for organizations. Specialized threat prevention, distributed denial of service protection, and application control continue to be key drivers for security deployments."
While Juniper saw good sequential growth over the second quarter of 2013, it still declined 15.7 percent compared to the prior year. Palo Alto Networks surpassed Blue Coat as the fifth largest appliance vendor, with a share of 5.3 percent on 46.1 percent growth compared with the year prior.
"As security and cybercrimes continue to remain key concerns across all segments of the rapidly changing technology sector, adopting robust measures to ensure cyber security and confidence in protecting privacy, data, and information is critical," Ebenezer Obeng-Nyarkoh, senior research analyst at IDC’s Worldwide Trackers Group, said in a statement. "As a result, businesses continue to look for cost-effective investments to secure their computing environment."